We have this antique hotel desk in our Steampunk living room. It fits the theme really well, but the angle of the desk surface made it hard to set my laptop on and do blogging. So I put together a small Steampunk themed base station that I could set my laptop on as well as a leather covered pad for the mouse.
So this is the unit as completed with the laptop and mouse in place.
This is the base and pad as they look.
The base is made of oak with a plywood oak veneered panel across the surface. I added some gears and a small meter on the left side.
It is cut at an angle that brings the laptop to near horizontal when set in place.
The mouse pad is just an oak frame that hold a plywood piece with red vinyl surface. The friction of the vinyl is enough to keep the mouse from sliding down the surface due to the angle of the desktop.
The vinyl is stretched over 1/4 in plywood and held on with carpet tape. It was then folded around the edge of the plywood and glued along the vertical edge. The plywood/vinyl piece was inserted into the routered oak frame. Each corner is held down with copper plate and brass wood screws. The copper pieces were scraps from other projects. I decided to leave them in roughly the shape that I found them, giving a legacy to other pieces I have made.
The top right hold-down was a copper piece I had used to practice soldering a brass rivet too in a old project. I thought including it here added a nice touch.
This is a view from a bit further away. It makes for a nice standing type work station.